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The Ultimate Sin  |
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You have a confirmation of your reservation in your hand as the hotel’s Guest Service Agent tells you: “No rooms at the Inn tonight!” It probably sounds familiar and in my opinion is the ultimate sin and break of trust in a client-company relationship.
It does happen all the time and sometimes for good reasons. However, often times it is greed that actually costs the company more money in the long-term. Let me tell how it works.
Hotels, just like airlines, sell perishable goods. If the room isn’t sold tonight, it can’t be put on sale the next morning. One of my favorite phrases in the business has always been: ”We sell bananas!” So quite naturally every effort is made to sell the inventory of rooms that particular night.
If there is a lot of demand in the city or the hotel’s specific area, the hotel will start to “overbook”. The reason is that many travelers, even though they have confirmed reservations with credit card numbers guaranteeing the room, will not show up.
The reality that hotels experience when they try to process a room or No-Show charge on the card, is that most of the time it ends up being disputed and the actual amount of money collected is not that high.
If a hotel has a lot of individual travelers or as the industry calls it transient business, the chances of the above mentioned No-Shows are very high and as a result the overbooking process begins. The number of rooms that are overbooked varies from hotel to hotel and the type of hotel. A resort with deposits on hand is unlikely to overbook, and if they do, will absolutely make sure your room is not sold. Convention hotels deal with a different set of circumstances as do airport hotels etc.
The fact is, that as a customer none of this is your problem. So to protect yourself make sure that you confirm your reservation directly with the hotel and not the central reservations office. Preferably you should do this on the day of your arrival, in particular if you know the city or hotel that you are traveling to is very busy.
Should you encounter a situation where the hotel did overbook you, initially focus on the solution, which means, where am I going to stay tonight. The hotel has a responsibility to find you and pay for comparable accommodations, transportation to your new hotel and a long distance call for you to notify people of the changes in your travel plans.
The hotel should follow up with you the following day and if they don’t you should contact them. If you are not satisfied with the hotel’s explanation and the manner in which they dealt with your problem, let your money do the talking and take you future business elsewhere.
In addition I also recommend you contact someone like myself. At Hotel Insider we keep a database of travelers experiences at particular hotels, which influences the hotel’s listing in our booking engine.
I hope this gives you so some insight into the overbooking process.
in hospitality, Thomas
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Date Listed: 2003-09-26
More articles:
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Thomas Wahl
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